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History Optional PYQ Master Pack · Model answer

Large number of land grants in hitherto non-arable tracts invariably meant expansion of agriculture in early medieval India. How did the management of hydraulic resources (different types of irrigation works) facilitate expansion of agriculture in this period?

  • UPSC 2021
  • Early Medieval India, 750-1200

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A land grant charter recording a donation of forest or waste to a Brahmana or a temple did not, by itself, put a single acre under the plough — it only conferred a legal and fiscal claim over a tract that still had to be physically converted into arable land. The premise embedded in this…

You are reading the opening of the model answer. The full answer is part of the History Optional PYQ Master Pack.

What the full answer covers

  • The Grant as Legal Instrument, Not a Technical One
  • Types of Irrigation Works Attested in the Period
  • The Land-Grant/Irrigation Nexus at the Point of Creation
  • Local Institutions That Managed These Works
  • Royal Patronage and the Direct Royal Role
  • The Historiographical Debate: Fragmentation or Integration
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